Working on the Railway

I was at a Smithsonian exhibit the other day called, "The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden." While walking through the exhibit I decided to turn this blog from a photo history of the old South to an outlet for disseminating my political views. No, no, I'm just kidding! Sorry. Really, while at the exhibit I came across a timeline of major events in the history of the United States. In the early 1800's, one occurrence in particular caught my eye. The note said, "Charleston-Hamburg Railroad constructed," and right then I realized I'd forgotten to mention anything of substance about this unusual (and very historic) railroad. We'll remedy that with this post. This picture MIGHT show a piece of the Charleston-Hamburg track, which is mostly gone from the immediate area (though it exists in places). The shot is of the tracks JUST on the other side of the Savannah River from Augusta, curving off into the distance through what used to be the bustling town of Hamburg, SC.



We already know about the short rise and long fall of Hamburg, and we know about the bad things that happened there. We know that Hamburg's founder, Henry Shultz, eventually tried to kill himself. We know that the Hamburg Riot played a key role in the election of Governor Wade Hampton III, the "Saviour of South Carolina," who'd been called "a veritable god of war" by a fellow Confederate soldier, and whose campaign against the policies of Reconstruction had been met with "something akin to religious ecstasy," according to historian Walter Edgar. We also know that the little that remains of Hamburg is also pretty spooky. But, the Hamburg-Charleston Railroad was undeniably a good thing for the whole country. Although, characteristically, the railroad sealed the eventual doom of Hamburg and at least one person was killed by it in spectacular fashion. This is not a picture of the Hamburg-Charleston line. In fact, it's the trestle below the aqueduct by the Augusta Canal. Sneaky of me, I know.



In the 1820's, during what might have been the first economic recession in US history, the politicians of Charleston, SC, were trying to find a way to get more trade into and out of their city. Charleston, of course, is close to the sea, and in those days was isolated by countless swamps, rivers, pine forests, and muddy wagon trails. It was said to be easier to get to Philadelphia from Charleston than it was to get to the towns of northwest South Carolina. The businessmen of Charleston wanted easy access to Augusta, in particular, where the Savannah River was a major conduit of trade. So, in 1827, it was decided that a railroad would be built between Charleston and Hamburg, a boldly brazen and brash move. This railroad would be the first steam-powered railway in the country. At 136 miles long, it would also be the longest railway in the world. The photo is of an abandoned bridge off the Aiken-Augusta Highway in the area of old Hamburg. Just beyond the bottom left of the frame is the spot where a kidnapped man was burned to death in his car. Pleasant.

By the time the line reached Hamburg on October 3, 1833, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which was also attempting to get a steam-powered train up and running, had only completed 13 miles of track. But not everyone was excited about the railroad coming to town. One prominent landowner in Barnwell, SC, refused to allow the train to pass through his town at all as he had adopted the strange notion that the machine would kill his slaves. What, were they gonna wander onto the track and get mowed down by a REALLY slow moving train? Even Henry Shultz, Hamburg's founder, wasn't sold on the idea. While he donated some land for the purpose, he believed the railroad would never supplant river transport, a tragic error. Certainly the Charleston-Hamburg line had problems to contend with initially. At first, the use of horses was considered and even wind-power proposed to move the trains. Eventually, once steam-power was settled on, a special locomotive had to be built while track was laid over miles of soggy, inhospitable land, an unprecedented feat in itself. Christened with the fairly wimpy moniker, The Best Friend of Charleston, the engine weighed 3 tons and generated less horsepower than a modern riding lawn mower. This is a shot from the ghoulish mission, located in old Hamburg.



After an early trial run, an observer had this to say about the Best Friend of Charleston: "(The engine) flew on the wings of wind at the speed of 15 to 25 miles per hour, annihilating time and space...leaving all the world behind...and landed us all safe at the Lines before any of us had time to determine whether or not it was prudent to be scared." Uh, okay then. However, the train proved to be unstable at "high" speed and a 10 mph speed limit was imposed for the sake of safety. And, as it happened, it WAS prudent to be scared. The Best Friend of Charleston exploded not long after, killing the fireman, scalding the engineer, and sending locomotive shrapnel all over the countryside. The train had yet to get 10 miles outside of Charleston. But there was no turning back. The usable bits of the blown-up choo-choo were collected and a second locomotive built, the aptly-titled Phoenix. Once the line was complete, the Charleston-Hamburg Railroad was the first line to offer scheduled passenger service. It was also the first line to carry the US Mail. And Branchville, SC, became the first railroad junction in the world. That's a lotta firsts. This is a beached boat on old Hamburg land, just along the Savannah River, fast being covered by an upscale housing development.



Originally, the Charleston-Hamburg Railroad was supposed to go all the way to Memphis, TN. However, it never really made it past Hamburg. In fact, it was difficult to get the line extended to nearby Columbia, SC. When a line was finally constructed to Columbia from Greenville, it meant trouble for Hamburg. When a depot was finally built in Augusta in 1852, it meant the end of Hamburg's importance as a railroad town altogether. It also meant the beginning of a long slide into obscurity. Incidentally, the route to Memphis was not completed until 1858. This is a random shot of the Phoenix Oil Company, probably not named after the locomotive, but a nice example of the Art-Deco influence that's still to be found around Augusta, tucked into forgotten corners.



In the 1980's, folks put together a little celebration of the Charleston-Hamburg Railroad, even going so far as to give people rides on a replica of the Best Friend of Charleston. But, after a century-and-a-half of continous service, this publicity push was the end of the line, so to speak, for the original railway. By the mid-1980's, a large section of track from Branchville, in the middle of the state, to Aiken was abandoned. The line from Augusta to Graniteville does still operate (on which a train just derailed), with disastrous results), and the first photo of this post is of part of that stretch (I think!). The picture shown has nothing to do with trains. It's an outtake from the Rooming House. When I first stuck my head around the door I saw something black and furry scamper across the mattress and off into the darkness. Aw, cute, a rat. Note whiskey bottle under bed.



I got my info for this post from a variety of sources. One of the best was a now-gone site on abandoned railroads. A second was a page off the Henry Shultz and Hamburg, SC website. The photo here is another from the Rooming House. That's real train-hopping hobo graffiti on the wall of a third floor bedroom. Whenever I'd get stuck at the tracks down on Laney-Walker I'd assuage my annoyance by looking for the hobo graffiti on the sides of boxcars. Here are some great photos, none of which are by me.

The accompanying picture is another in the series of disturbing photos of women's dress shoes. These were at the bottom of the stairs shown in the second shot of the Rooming House post and are just as we found them. I don't know what the deal is but, please, be careful out there. That goes for EVERYONE. Next I think I might do an outtakes post. I know, I know, you're thinking, "Oh no, he's out of ideas." But 'tis not so. Well, even if I was, do you think I'd tell you? Anyway, I've got a few odd photos from here and there that I'd like to post so I can get them out of the way. It'll also give me a chance to reprise a few posts you may not have seen and say a few more things about them. Thanks to the people that wrote in with kinds words for City of Dust. We'll keep on as we've been doing then. Until next time, stay well.

Leaving the Valley

First, if you're reading this and CAN'T SEE THE PHOTOS (and actually want to) please let me know. I've been considering reducing the number of posts on the front page since there's so many pictures up and I realize it might be loading slow. I've been pretty happy with my hosting service, but if you have a slow connection you might experience problems. If you have a dial-up it could be hopeless. Anyone can leave an anonymous comment, so feel free. If I don't hear anything, I'll assume 1.) Everything's fine; 2.) My reader's are patient (or shy); 3.) Most people hit "NEXT BLOG" before they even got through the first sentence. Anyway, this is a shot of the entrance to what remains of the Bath Mill. At least I think it is. I seem to recall this being the next mill down Highway 421, which is the old stretch running through the Valley. And that would make this Bath. Unfortunately, I'm too far away to check on that right now.

Whew, the last couple posts have been kinda intense. Initially, the purpose of this blog was just to post some photos since I'd been sending them out by e-mail to friends for some time. This way they could CHOOSE to look at them, if they liked. I thought I'd add some context to make things more interesting. It was never my intention to make each post a school lesson. On the other hand, there's much more murder, suicide, and general depravity than I recall being taught in school. So, I guess I'll keep on this way. But this post will be a little low key. I swear we're getting the hell out of the Valley, I just had a couple other shots to put up. This is the water tower of the former Bath (I think) Mill. Virtually nothing is left of this mill except a pile of bricks and some flooring. It wasn't even worth hopping the fence for a closer look.



A little further down Highway 421 and we come to this abandoned treat shack. You know your town is in trouble when people aren't even buying ice cream. Fifty feet away was a monument of some kind, with flags and plaques and a paved walkway, but no one to be seen. Following the highway through the Valley you pass abandoned buildings, crumbling homes, and businesses hanging on by a thread. Rural economies have always been tenuous, and the situation seems to be worsening across the country. Just drive through the small towns of YOUR state.



As we were driving along Highway 421, my companion told me of a strange restaurant set back in the woods off a dirt road. We decided to check it out. We turned off the main road and into the woods. After a distance we came to this little shack, beyond which was a fenced-in compound of sorts, with a circular drive. A few cars were parked outside a dilapidated building, the stars 'n bars flying. You don't think we actually went in, do you? Although, I am reminded of another restaurant in Jackson, SC, which recently closed. The floor of this establishment was pitted concrete, except where it had collapsed and was roped off with flagging. Old rusted bicycles and fans were strewn about and in one corner of a long bar, which was covered with boxes and essentially unusable, was a dusty, yellowed NASCAR shrine. You could see daylight through the warped doorframe. I ate there quite a few times. The macaroni and cheese was quite good, as were the butter beans.



In between Highway 421 and the Aiken-Augusta Highway is an entire block of abandoned homes, as well as a bar and restaurant. Actually, the restaurant recently collapsed. Unfortunately, I visited this area early in my explorations and didn't get my photos digitized. So, unless I scan them at some point I won't be able to post any, which is too bad since there's lots of material. I have a nice shot of a blue and white room in a house, with a recliner in the middle of the floor, and vaguely menacing (and very mispelled) Spanish graffiti sprayed on the wall in dripping red paint. But I can't post it! The only digitized shot I have of this block is this photo of a piano and TV from the living room of a small house. People are always leaving their pianos behind. They're very common in old buildings. Even DETROITBLOG recently posted a picture of one. See how the piano and TV are starting to tilt toward each other? Imagine what that means for the structural integrity of the floor. But, you know, safety last, I guess. The browning in this shot is due to it being taken with a disposable camera. Disposable cameras have very poor flashes. Lately I've been posting photos of questionable quality and technique when I think they might be otherwise interesting. Maybe I should stop that. If you'd like to see a better shot of what the old mill towns looked like, there's a good shot two-thirds of the way down this page.

Yeah, yeah, one last photo from the Clearwater Mill. I just wanted to show everyone the staircase we had to climb up to get to the third floor. We gingerly crept from step to step, carefully hopping over the spots where the floorboards were missing. Ah, hell, I'm kidding. Even we're not that dumb. This is a stairway we came across at the far end of the mill while trying to find our way down from the third floor. After some careful consideration and thoughtful discussion, we decided it wasn't going to work and had to make our way back through the entire mill to the stairway we used to come up. Most inconvenient.

Clearwater Mill Redux

Alright, everyone's probably getting tired of the Clearwater Mill and I know that my historical info isn't even from the Clearwater, but the nearby Graniteville Mill. But bear with me for one last post. I guarantee it'll get creepy, if nothing else. Speaking of Graniteville, there was a train wreck there last week that spilled chlorine, caused the evacuation of 5,400, sickened 250, and has killed nine so far. One of the worst industrial accidents in the US in recent years. Six of the dead were killed by chlorine vapor in the Avondale textile mill, one of the last functional mills in Horse Creek Valley, and other mill workers remain unaccounted for. Some residents had to go to decontamination facilities. The railroad, Norfolk Southern, has compensated residents with $100 Wal Mart gift cards. Life can still be tough in the Valley.



William Gregg, born in Columbia, SC in 1836, was the man who saw the value of milling textiles in Horse Creek Valley, built the Graniteville Mill, and, by extension, fathered textile mills from Aiken, SC to the Georgia state line. At first, Gregg was very much in favor of slave-labor. Gregg himself on the two reasons for using slaves in the mills: "First, you are not under the necessity of educating them, and have, therefore, their uninterrupted services from the age of eight years. The second is that when you have your mill filled with expert hands, you are not subjected to the change which is constantly taking place with whites. We possess the cheapest, steadiest, and most easily controlled labor to be found in the United States. All concur that there is no difference as to the capability; the only question is whether hired labor is not cheaper than slave labor." As usual, all the quotes and attendant info is from Richard Pierce and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, whom I thank for being so unknowingly generous.

But did you catch that last line about whether hired labor is cheaper than slave labor? Yup, Gregg was starting to think that maybe he could hire poor whites for even less than what it cost to keep slaves. "Shall we pass unnoticed the thousands of poor, ignorant, degraded white people among us, who in this land of plenty live in comparative nakedness and starvation? It is only necessary to build a manufacturing village of shanties in a healthy location in any part of the State to have crowds of these poor people around you, seeking employment at half the compensation given to operatives at the North."



But the captains of industry were also afraid of the poor white population. James Taylor, involved in the founding of the Graniteville Mill, said this: "So long as these poor but industrious people could see no mode of living except by a degrading operation of work with the negro upon the plantation, they were content to endure life in its most discouraging forms, satisfied that they were above the slave, though faring often worse than he. (But now) the great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that they have rights and that they too are entitled to some of the sympathy which falls upon the suffering. It is this great upbearing of our masses that we are to fear, so far as our institutions are concerned. Crowd from these employments the fast increasing white population of the South, and fill our factories and workshops with our slaves, and we shall have in our midst those whose very existence is in hostile array to our institutions." So, by giving poor whites hard, dangerous mill work at low pay you not only pacify them, but increase your profit. Nice.



However, some of the sins of the father, whether real or imagined, may have been visited on the son. In 1876, at a stockholders' meeting, someone shot James Gregg, William's heir. A young man, Bob McEvoy, who had only one leg and worked as an office boy in the mill before disappearing two years prior, was the shooter. No one ever knew why McEvoy shot Gregg--McEvoy didn't say before the noose was tied around his neck. It might say something about the culture of the mill towns to note that, while citizens professed to be fiercely loyal to the mills, Bob McEvoy became a folk hero. The citizens thought Bob was smart and said his mind was "a powerful one." In fact, his father was so afraid doctors would dig the corpse up to dissect the brain that he buried his son in the corner of his yard where he could watch over the grave. At one point in the 1970's Cormac McCarthy and Richard Pearce were working on a fictionalized screenplay about McEvoy and the shooting of Gregg. I don't believe it was ever finished. But, geez, I really wish it had been.

Speaking of swinging from a rope, here's the second piece of evidence that someone else had been in the mill. Remember back in the Davidson School post (see: School's Out...Forever!) I mentioned that it wasn't homeless people that scared me. Nope, it's people that hang rabbits from nooses. I guarantee you this wasn't done by a homeless person who'd been enjoying the many comforts an abandoned textile mill provides. But it could've easily been done by a serial killer in training. It's possible it was just some school kids, which wouldn't make it any better, really, but that's a pretty elaborate noose and you'll note the rope is tied up very high, out of the frame. We were glad not to run into the fella that did this, that's for sure.

In 1829, the voting rights of poor Irish peasants were rescinded. Here's what Richard Pearce said: "No longer politically useful and unable to pay rent, the cottier peasant and his family were driven from what little holdings they had and literally placed on the ship that was to carry them on one of the most extraordinary migrations in history. To understand the scale of this social upheaval, for example, during just three years from 1849-51 over a million persons were evicted by Irish landlords. To these vast numbers of newly dispossessed families, the destination mattered little. For Irish immigration during these terrible decades was an exodus, a flight. Oscar Handlin, the noted historian of Boston's immigrant population, quotes The Cork Examiner: 'The immigrants of this year are not like those of former ones; they are now actually running away from fever and disease and hunger, with money scarcely sufficient to pay passage for and find food for the voyage.'" This explains all the Irish graves in Magnolia cemetery (see: Ghoul's Night Out). Bob McEvoy's father was also one of these immigrants. Cloutezze Friday Johnson, the granddaughter of another Irish immigrant, had this to say about her father: "In fact, though, I think if he had ever had the opportunity I think he would have liked to do something else than work in the cotton mill. But that was all he knew to do because had never known anything else."



Putting so many poor people in one place worried the mill owners. James Taylor, an associate of William Gregg's, wrote: "Because an effort has been made to collect the poor and unemployed white population into our new factories, fears have arisen that some evil would grow out of the introduction of such establishments among us." When the mills couldn't hire any more of the incoming poor, the owners lamented the continued arrival of the destitute. William Gregg told his stockholder's: "There is a pressure on us all the time for places. We are annoyed all the time with wagon loads of people sent here by neighborhood contributions to get clear of them. In many instances they have been abandoned in inclement weather in our streets, destitute of food and clothing, and we have been obliged to administer to their wants and to send them back to the neighborhood from which they came, with our own teams. Sometimes they come by railroad, a poor woman with four or five helpless children, sent here and the passage paid by charitable people, under the presumption that Graniteville is a sort of charity hospital."



But, even if the mills could be a mixed-blessing, they nonetheless were a source of hope for those who worked and lived in the mill towns. From slavery, to the exploitation of poor whites, and eventually to the providing of a reasonably comfortable income to the middle-class, the mills had followed the course of southern history. Ms. Ollie Whittle: "Everything’s on equal now. Just what they pay the white man or the white woman, they pay to the Negro. Everybody got forty-eight to fifty-two frames now. I don't care if you look like snow or look like black ink. Flesh is flesh, and blood is blood. You go out there and cut a man look like soot and cut one look like snow and put that blood together, you don't know which is the white blood and which is the black, do you? And on top of that, if you don't hire me here, you hire me over yonder. If I don’t work over there, I can come right here and work. And I tell them over there, 'To hell with you man. This ain't no slaveytime. Slave time never will be back here.'" Nor will the time of the great textile mills of Horse Creek Valley.

The Mill Pt. II

I was reading the Onion the other day and there was a quote from a guy named Robert Warshow regarding film noir. He said that film noir allows an audience to "say 'no' the the culture's pervasive 'yes.'" I liked that so much I thought I might make it my New Year's resolution. Say "no" to Britney Spears and Ben Affleck. Say "no" to a recycled identity based on the things you buy. Say "no" to boring old men who can only justify their outmoded beliefs and actions through outrageous lies. And, good grief, let's start looking for something else in 2005. On the other hand, sometimes it's good to say "yes" when someone (or something) says "no." And so it is that we're back at the Clearwater Mill in the Horse Creek Valley, SC.



It's hard to believe there was ever a time when people felt a certain loyalty to the companies they worked for. No doubt, companies have no one but themselves to blame for that state of affairs. But those that worked the textile mills in the Valley were fiercely loyal. L. C. "Chick" Thomas, personnel director of the Graniteville Mill (or, the "Big G," just down the road from Clearwater), about 1975: "What's happened to the feelings of our people toward the flag of this country? Toward their government? They've changed. What do you think Watergate did to this country? But I'll tell you this, you find any man around here who's worked for Graniteville Company ten years or more and ask him, if he had the same job somewhere else, would he go to it? He will tell you no, nine times out of ten." All quotes in this post are from this website, the only real first-person record of mill life I could find, with credit to Richard Pearce and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. This is a photo of what remains of the first floor bathroom at the Clearwater.



In fact, the longest record of continuous service by an industrial worker was set at the Graniteville Mill. James Wesley Rearden began work with the Graniteville Company in 1872 at age eleven and continued on until his death in 1959, 87 years later. That record may still stand to this day. Ansel Thompson was also dedicated to his job: "In the fall of 1941 I went on seven days a week and worked seven days a week until I retired in 1970. I never did get a vacation in 28 years. Never a whole week at a time. During vacation time when everybody else was taking theirs, they needed me on my job. And I did stick with them, and I can say it paid off. But it was awful hard. If I'd have had my way, there was several times that I would have been on a vacation with my family because my wife was off work. But I had to work on...I can still remember just as clear as day what that first pay check was. $2.52 a week."



The huge machines used to work the textiles remain in the mill, dusty and forgotten, a scene unfathomable a generation before. Ollie Whittle, an African-American women who started in the Graniteville Mill at age 17: "I was the first colored woman they hired in that mill. I went to the mill in 1917 when they wasn't no men. Uncle Sam had the men. You know what I did once? One time I didn't have a job, so when Monday morning come I just walked right up into that mill with my mop and pail and started scrubbing out the alleys you know between the machines. I worked Monday all day, then Tuesday, Wednesday. On Thursday the Second Boss come on, and he thought the First Boss had hired me. And the First Boss thought the Second Boss had hired me, And there I was just working away. I was smart then. I wouldn't say nothing to nobody. Thursday morning, 'Ollie, how long you been here?’ ‘Oh man, don't you come asking me. I been here ever since Monday morning. And don't you get my time wrong neither cause I’ll tear up this mill. I been here ever since Monday morning.' And I had been there since Monday morning, but nobody didn't hire me. I just went up there and went to work."



Work at the mill was tough, no matter what your job, and the pay low at what was the only real game in town. In addition, accounting practices could get creative. Ms. Whittle: "I used to work ten hours a day, five days and a half a week, go to work Monday morning and knock off Saturday dinner and get my envelope. Wouldn't be but six dollars and five cents. And you know a lot of times the boss didn't send in no social security for you. Well, he’d tell you he was taking it out, but you didn’t know. Then when you get out of a job and want to draw your compensation, you don't have it. You know, they got me charged up with three different numbers, and all the good numbers where I made the most time they say belong to someone else. I just don't know."



Miss Whittle goes on to tell about how, when buying canned tobacco at the local white-owned grocery, blacks had to be refer to it as "Mister Prince Albert." She found calling a can "mister" insulting and refused to do it. She also directed some of that indignant anger toward the mills: "You know they wouldn't want a fool like me in those mills nowadays anyway. 'Cause I tell you what's right and what's wrong and stick to it. I don't care nothing about your Gatling guns, machine guns, your National Guard, or nothing else. But I ain't got time to stir up nothing now. All I want is a living. I ain't looking for the killing 'cause God gonna do that."



The Clearwater Mill is massive, and on the upper floor little bridges led from one area to another. These are wooden bridges and we crossed them very gingerly indeed, so as not to need that first aid box tacked to the wall. Reverend Cecil Bearden, who at one time ran the orientation program for the Graniteville Mill, said something to his new employees that is pertinent to urban exploration, as well as life in general, really: "You're gonna make some decisions out there, some good ones, some bad ones. Those good ones gonna put jingle in your pocket, those bad ones gonna put tears in your eyes."



This door on the third floor opened out to provide a nice view across Horse Creek Valley, the mills mostly gone quiet now. Miss Whittle, one last time: "Wash, iron, tend to the baby, and rake the yard. If they didn’t have no baby, you carried dinner to the mill. We were their servants. They were poor folks. You can be sure the big shots’ wives didn't work in no mill, like the Supers' wives. But these little poor factory people that worked in the mill, they had to work. They had to get somebody to stay there with those children and work for them. Somebody had to do it. These people wasn’t paying nothing because they wasn't making nothing." And I'm not quite done with the Clearwater Mill yet. Next time we'll close the door, head back inside, and roam around a little more.

Horse Creek Valley, South Carolina

Alright, back again. I hope everyone had a nice New Year and woke up with all limbs intact. Me? I'm so lame I didn't even make it to midnight. I'll try to redeem myself with the next series of posts in which we'll visit the Clearwater Mill and talk about the Horse Creek Valley region of Aiken County, South Carolina. This is gonna be a multi-post saga. There's not much written about Horse Creek Valley and the history of the textile mills, but I'll see what I can put together. Most of the infrastructure that attended the huge mills, including company towns and the mills themselves, is gone. However, we'll start with one mill that does exist, although it's been shut down for years: Clearwater Finishing, a textile mill in, fittingly enough, Clearwater, SC.



As you head generally northeast on SC 191 toward Aiken you pass all the old mill towns, including Clearwater, Bath, Langley, Warrenville, Graniteville, and Vaucluse. Most are filled with nothing but memories at this point, although the remaining little company houses, aligned in neat rows, are generally still occupied. Given the importance of Horse Creek Valley, not much easily accessible information exists. This website is an exception and, giving the requisite due to Richard Pearce and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, I'm going to steal a piece about Graniteville wholesale because I think it says as much about the milling region now as it did when written in 1975:

"For Graniteville is a town that believes in its ghosts, welcomes them as family: whether it's a great grandfather, long dead and buried, back to squeak his ancient porch rocker on a hot still summer evening, or locked doors that open in the night to a kitchen whore once long ago someone's grandmother burned to death in a fire. In the evening after dinner over coffee, the town seems to shake out its ghosts like pecans from the trees in the garden. Night dogs bark the distance between houses like old friends calling out across a field each one's too tired to cross, and old stories weave their way through the sleep of whole families, whole generations of families, until the history of an evening becomes the history of a town and of a century."



Historically, farming, especially tobacco and cotton, was the economic life-blood of the Aiken-Augusta area. Unfortunately, tobacco and cotton rapidly deplete the soil. In 1920-1921 the boll weevil decimated Georgia's cotton crop and the bottom fell out of the market, blows from which the cotton-economy never fully recovered. In short, by the time the 20th century got onto its feet, farmers were finding themselves unable to make a living and the Great Depression was already on deck. Down in the Valley, where Horse Creek was a ready source of water power, textile mills had been providing steady employment for decades. The first large mill was built in Graniteville in the mid-1840's, although small mills had been established in Vaucluse as early as the Napoleanic Wars (1803-1815), when British cloth was embargoed. By 1880 mills were in operation throughout the Valley. At first the mills processed mostly cotton, but later handled rayon, polyester, etc. You know, all your favorite fabrics. Normally sealed-up tight, some construction out front provided us with a temporary entrance to the three-story Clearwater Mill. Although, if you look at the lower right of the sign in the first photo, you can see someone got inside before us and brought their spray paint. Just when you think you're daring, someone else makes you feel like a sissy.



Now, the farmers across the river believed that the red Georgia dirt was in their blood and that life without the wide blue vistas of sky and the scent of long-leaf pine on the air meant certain death. They scorned the textile workers, who they referred to as "lintheads" because of the bits of cotton and fabric that stuck to their hair. For their part, the textile workers thought the farmers were ridiculously behind the times, tending their fields in the brutal summer sun, nearly unable to tease a crop out of the sandy clay along the river plain. Yet life in the mills was harsh and workers fought long hours, low pay, tyrannical supervisors, obscenely dangerous working conditions, and respiratory problems. In the early years, workers literally inhaled the textiles they milled, destroying their lungs. In some towns every male, essentially all of whom worked in the mills, had a chronic cough. This photo of the third floor illustrates dangers of an entirely different kind.



In 1933 Erskine Caldwell, a native of Moreland, GA, wrote God's Little Acre, a book based entirely on the tension (psychological, emotional, and, uh, apparently sexual) between farmers and millers in the region surrounding Horse Creek Valley. In the story, a family is destroyed as some members refuse to leave the barren land and others embrace mill life. In the end, it is the mills, or, more specifically, those that own the mills, the wreak the worst destruction. Here is a sample:

"Up and down the Valley lay the company towns and the ivy-walled cotton mills and the firm-bodied girls with eyes like morning-glories and the men stood on the hot streets looking at each other while they spat their lungs into the deep yellow dust of Carolina. He knew they could never get away from the blue-lighted mills at night and the bloody-lipped men on the streets and the unrest of the company towns. Nothing could drag him away from there now."



God's Little Acre is a vivid, searing, and lurid portrait of Horse Creek Valley. It was censored by the Georgia Literary Commission, attacked by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and banned outright in Boston. So, yeah, it's a fabulous book! Normally I'd say any book that sold 14 million copies must be terrible (Hello, John Grisham!) but in this case I make an exception. Here's a forklift's-eye view of the third floor. Other than the graffiti on the sign out front, there was almost no evidence anyone had been inside the mill recently. However, weirdly, next to this forklift was a relatively new McDonald's sack and the remains of a Big Mac. There was ONE other piece of evidence, but we'll talk about that later.



As the textile industry declined in the 1970's and 1980's, the Clearwater Mill closed for the first time. It reopened later, then closed again. I'm not sure how long it has been vacant now, but from the scraps lying around it would seem the mid-1990's. Walking around on the third floor required the utmost caution. Parts of the floor were totally gone and other portions were just wood, much of which was rotted and would provide a quick way back to the second floor. We got around by walking on the steel beams the supported the floor itself, which you could see through the holes in some areas.

In one section of the mill thousands of pieces of ancient computer equipment were strewn all around, some of it brand new. If you're looking for giant floppy discs, punch-card readers, and obsolete monitors, the plastic casing yellowed and coated in dust, well, it's out there. Elsewhere, old adding machines, rubber stamps, and discarded reams of fabric were lying on desks and stacked on shelves.
Following World War II the communities in the Horse Creek Valley, including Clearwater, relied completely on the mills for employment and economic stimulation. To date, no industries have moved into these towns to replace the textile mills. More to come.

Dead Trucks

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. We're going to get a little whimsical for this post and visit a heavy equipment junkyard along the Aiken-Augusta highway. The next post will be epic, detailing the largest building we got into in the CSRA (that's the Central Savannah River Area, don't ya know) and it's going to take a couple posts to cover. For now then, in the holiday spirit, we'll take it a little easy. If you were driving from Augusta to the building-to-be-posted you might pass the junkyard anyway, so it does make some sense.



Remember this view? I don't know if sitting in the back of the bus carries the same connotations it once did, but that used to be where all the bad kids sat so they could do bad things on the way to and from school. The good kids sat in the middle seats and those subject to getting beat up would go for the front. I never really did most of those bad things, but I still preferred sitting in the back, myself.

There are a couple impressive photo books out there that have shots of smashed-up vintage cars. One is "Car Crashes and Other Sad Stories," by Mell Kilpatrick. Mell took pictures for newspapers in Southern California in the 1940's and 1950's and was often one of the first people to arrive at accident scenes. Some of his photos are undeniably gruesome (you can often see the victims strewn about the wreckage) but there is something disquietingly beautiful about the mangled Packards and disemboweled Chevy's. All that fractured glass and twisted chrome reminds you that life can be dangerous and it's always been so. But especially when you're not wearing your seatbelt.



Another book of interest is "Strange Days, Dangerous Nights," by Larry Millett. Larry worked as a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota and has assembled photos from the Pioneer Press and the St. Paul Dispatch circa 1940-1960. Many are accidents and murder scenes, but there's plenty of strange "cultural" shots as well. These photos were all published, sometimes on the front page, and if you think media coverage can be graphic now this book (and exhibit) will give you pause.

One of the great things about those old newspaper photos is that nearly all the photgraphers used the Speed Graphic camera, first manufactured in 1912. The Speed Graphic is that classic black box camera with the bellows and a couple lenses and a huge flash. That camera, particularly when used with a flash at night, lit up the foreground, but threw long, dark shadows into the background, which went to black. Thus the shots are very striking and even mundane pictures can appear powerfully stark. Try doing that with your digital! By the mid-1960s, of course, small 35mm cameras were becoming popular and the last Speed Graphic was made in 1973, the year I was born.

Taking to the road in South Carolina is a bit like playing Russian Roulette. I recall hearing that at one time Aiken County had the highest per capita auto accident rate in the US. I don't doubt it. As a result, there's lots of smashed cars around. There's a huge junkyard in a forest outside Aiken that is full of cars dating back to the 1930's. However, I never went to check it out because it just didn't seem like a good idea. In the South, in particular, you'll find that people are very protective of their property. When someone threatens you with a shotgun if you don't get off their land, they're not just trying to scare you. You better leave. Quickly. On the two occasions that I've been confronted it's seemed questionable to me whether the angry citizens I found myself dealing with really owned the property I was on or not. If they did, why would they admit it? Yeah, I know, a lawsuit. Still, they should have been embarrassed. Both were rotted eyesores off busy highway intersections. In any case, it's always best to play dumb and polite and make a hasty exit.

"All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage"-Cormac McCarthy, "Blood Meridian." "Blood Meridian" is a brilliant, bloody novel about, at least partially, how a proximity to sustained violence can result in deep disaffection, putting the participant at a remove from civilized society in a way that is real and possibly permanent. The book is like Apocalypse Now set in the desert of the West around 1850. In the mid-1990's, Vietnam Vet Bill Shields wrote three books of powerful poems about the difficulty soldiers have reintegrating. It's something to think about right now.



I won't argue whether our society is progressing from a higher to lower order. I'll leave that to others to waste their time with. However, it does seem like things constructed in the fast-fading past were built better and more expressively, at least when it comes to architecture and design (and the grill badges on fire trucks). McCarthy was speaking of civilizations, but the statement is no less applicable to the decay of objects. And these places and things now frequently lie in ruins and there is always an air of mystery about them. You can even imagine that the neglect and abandonment of what was once so important to those who built them and the people that used them, now unhappily forgotten, has cast the slightest pall of rage over what little remains. I can't believe that wandering around an abandoned Wal-Mart in 50 years will be as profound an experience as creeping through a turn-of-the-century farmhouse or Art Deco movie theater. But, ah, what a thought, that: abandoned Wal-Marts.

A kind reader suggested that some of the places featured on this site be GPS'd so that they can be revisited. This is a good idea and it'd be especially interesting to go back to areas that will be demolished, such as the brick factory, and see what was built there. You could then take a photo and say, "Where this $200,000 townhome is there used to be a brick kiln." I might be able to do this on a return visit to the area, but if anybody else down there wants to try let me know. I'll only send you on safe and lawful excursions. But watch out for the kudzu. See ya next time.

White Riot

Okay, I'm back from a couple weeks down in the South. Most of the time I had to actually do work, but I made it to a few new places and got some photos. People seemed to like the brick factory shots and I went back there and got some more. There's plenty of survey flags, but the bulldozers aren't rolling yet. If the pictures turn out well I might put some more of the factory up. Yes, IF. I don't have a digital camera and I don't know what the shots look like until I develop them. Remember that feeling? Some of the pictures I've posted were even taken with a disposable, which is a good way to uselessly burn through a lot of money.

Anyway, above is a photo of a house in the woods off of Buena Vista in N. Augusta, SC. As usual, the occupants left lots of belongings, including a strange mannequin torso. The last two shots in the series are of a tarpaper shack just beyond the house in an overgrown powerline cut. This shack was kinda creepy and the trash was stacked high on the floor, making walking difficult (and dangerous). The most recent date found was off a football sports page from 1982. Don't panic, that's a DOLL lying in the filth. It was about 3 feet tall. Otherwise, I don't have much to say about this place. Who knows who lived there, what they did, or why they left? So, it being the night before Christmas and all, I thought I'd tell you the charming tale of the Hamburg Riot of 1876. Just throw another log on the fire, curl up with your favorite blanket, and enjoy a glimpse of history from the ghost of race relations past.



In the 1870's Federal troops were leaving the South and Reconstruction was losing momentum. Some southern states had reverted to keeping blacks from voting and the all-white Democratic administrations that followed were called "Redeemer" governments. However, South Carolina was one of only three states where the US Army was still present, preventing a "Redeemer" administration, and racial tensions were high. Some in the state argued that each white Democrat should find a way to keep at least one black man from voting, thus making it more likely that a Democratic candidate would be elected to office. Remember, Lincoln was a Republican. However, the Democratic Party was generally in disarray and couldn't even agree on candidates. It was against this political backdrop that the Hamburg Riot took place.

By the summer of 1876, Hamburg's prosperity was on the wane (see: previous post) and most white residents had left. The town was now populated largely by African-Americans with a few openly hostile white citizens hanging around. On July 4 there was an Independence Day parade and members of the local black militia were marching down the street when two white farmers ordered them to halt so they could move their wagon through. The militia members didn't want to stop marching and some arguments ensued. However, eventually the parade was stopped and the wagon allowed to pass.

The next day the two farmers went to the courthouse and demanded that the militia captain be arrested. The captain thought this was absurd, said as much, and was then ordered to stand trial for contempt of court on July 8, 1876. The members of the black militia gathered together in town, refusing to disarm. Some fighting began whereupon the white citizens recruited 100 men from Augusta and returned to the scene with...a cannon! After nightfall the militia men tried to escape, but 25 were captured and one killed. The following day, up to eight more captives were brutally murdered and the homes of the black townspeople were looted. The number of African-Americans killed seems to vary from 6 to 9, but everyone agrees that during the looting one white man was killed. This was probably not what Joe Strummer had in mind when he called for a white riot exactly 100 years later.



Further skirmishes erupted in Aiken, where 5000 men on horseback were reported to have gathered to aid 60 men being charged with murder. Despite this account coming from a Clemson College publication, the overtly racist tone of the source makes me question the figures. In any case, serious violence also followed in Ellenton, SC on September 15, 1876. According to Benjamin Tillman, "no one ever knew how many Negroes were killed, but there were forty or fifty or a hundred." The period around the Hamburg Riot was the beginning of the "red-shirt" movement, in which Democrats wore red shirts to protest "scalawags," considered traitors for cooperating with US troops, and "carpetbaggers," who came from the North, at least ostensibly to aid with Reconstruction. These events galvanized the white people of South Carolina and they were able to elect a Democratic governor, Wade Hampton III, later that year. (Remember, his family once owned the Goodale Inn.) Thus South Carolina became a "Redeemed" state, and the Hamburg Riot a symbol of racist violence to the North and self-determination to the South. Seven white men were indicted for the murders committed during the Hamburg Riot, but as soon as the new administration assumed office, all charges were dropped. The riot also kick-started the career of Benjamin Tillman, known affectionately as Pitchfork Ben after he threatened to stick a pitchfork in President Grover Cleveland.

Benjamin Tillman was one of those guys that made an entire political career out of being a complete prick. There sure have been a lot of them. He was present at the Hamburg Riot and instrumental in spreading the intended "message" of the event to citizens of both colors. Initially the commander of a paramilitary unit called the Sweetwater Sabre Club, Tillman became Governor of South Carolina in 1890, in which office he was heralded as the "Champion of White Men's Rule and Woman's Virtue." In 1894 he joined the US Senate and remained there for 24 years, making a run for President in 1896. And all of it can be traced to the popularity afforded him by his involvement in the Hamburg Riot. The guy has said so many mind-bending things it's tough to pick quotes. But how about this, concerning the riot:

"The purpose of our visit was to strike terror, and the next morning when the negroes who had fled to the swamp returned to the town, the ghastly sight which met their gaze of seven dead negroes lying stark and stiff certainly had its effect. The state of South Carolina has disenfranchised all of the colored race that it could under the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. We have done our level best, we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them, and we would have done it if we could, we took the government away. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it."

Or this, in a Congressional address:

"I have three daughters, but so help me God, I had rather find either one of them killed by a tiger or a bear and gather up her bones and bury them, conscious that she had died in the purity of her maidenhood, than to have her crawl to me and tell me the horrid story that she had been robbed of the jewel of her womanhood by a black fiend."

If you want a bit more information, within the context of violence in America, go here. A cartoon drawn at that time, featuring Lady Justice holding unbalanced scales of men killed in the riot is out there on the internet, too. Finally, a book has been written about Tillman, called "Tightening the Noose: Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy," by Stephen Kantrowitz. I haven't read it yet, but would like to. A review of the book, including more quotes and biography, is here.

In the center of North Augusta there's a monument to the Hamburg Riot. Only, it commemorates the single white victim, whose name I've forgotten. Meriwether something, I think. It reads: "In life he exemplified the highest ideal of Anglo-Saxon civilization. By his death he assured to the children of his beloved land the supremacy of that ideal. 'As his flame of life was quenched it lit the blaze of victory.'" Now, I would just like to say, the Hamburg Riot was a long time ago and you'll find racists everywhere you go, as you'll find people that couldn't care less about skin color. This is not an indictment of southerners or their culture, only a glimpse of an ugly footnote in history. And there's plenty of ugly history to go around. Now the monument on the other hand...

Merry Christmas. And to all, a good night.